The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connectors and connector assemblies that comprise unshielded twisted pair (UTP) circuits.
Some known electrical connectors are assembled with unshielded twisted pair (UTP) circuits. The UTP circuits may be configured to join directly to a housing of the connector assembly. The UTP circuits include first and second signal wires that are twisted outside of the housing. However, the amount of length of un-twisted signal wires is very important to the signal integrity of the electrical connector. Typically, many unshielded twisted wire pairs are terminated to the back end of the housing of the electrical connector. Such twisted wire pairs may extend from a common cable jacket. Having many wires terminated to terminals in the housing leads to relatively long lengths of the wires being exposed behind the housing. It is desirable to keep the length of un-twisted signal wires short. This can be very difficult in a typical electrical connector assembly where several different UTP circuits must also be terminated. The multiple different circuits lead to congestion of wires making it difficult to control the length of untwisted UTP circuit wires by the operator.
A need remains for an electrical connector assembly that controls the length of untwisted wires in a simplified assembly operation.